Journalist Kimon de Greef joins Chris Clarke to discuss his new book, The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths, and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence.

The Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius) spends most of the year underground, emerging to breed during summer rainstorms. It is also the only animal known to produce 5-MeO-DMT, an extraordinarily powerful psychedelic compound, in its defensive secretions.

That biological curiosity has made the toad the center of a global psychedelic industry. 

Chris and Kimon discuss how Sonoran toad secretions changed from a little-known psychedelic tool into an international spiritual commodity; how outsiders profit from romanticized ideas about Indigenous tradition; and what the resulting trade means for the toads, the people hired to collect them, and communities living amid poverty and cartel violence.

They also examine parallels with the commercial appropriation and poaching of white sage, and consider an uncomfortable contradiction: people seeking healing, transcendence and communion with nature may be supporting a supply chain built on wildlife exploitation, misinformation and harm.

Content Note

This episode contains discussion of drug use, addiction, death, animal mistreatment and abusive psychedelic practices. It is not intended as medical advice or encouragement to use 5-MeO-DMT or any other controlled substance.

About Kimon de Greef

Kimon de Greef is a South African journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Guernica and other publications. He has a master’s degree in conservation biology from the University of Cape Town and a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. Much of his reporting concerns wildlife trafficking, illicit economies and the complicated relationships between human desire and the natural world.

• Kimon de Greef’s website
• Kimon on Instagram
• Buy The Ego Trip through Bookshop.org
• Publisher’s page for The Ego Trip

In this episode

• The remarkable monsoon-dependent life of the Sonoran Desert toad
• What 5-MeO-DMT is, and why “toad licking” is both inaccurate and dangerous
• How Octavio Rettig helped popularize toad-derived 5-MeO-DMT
• Claims that toad smoking is an ancient Comcáac/Seri tradition
• Psychedelic tourism, cultural appropriation and spiritual marketing
• The economic realities behind supposedly “responsibly sourced” toad secretions
• Toad collection, repeated “milking,” displacement and disease transmission
• Why synthetic 5-MeO-DMT removes the need to exploit wild toads
• Parallels between the toad trade and the international market for poached white sage
• What scientists know and don't know about the toad’s population status
• The difficulty of conducting conservation research in cartel-controlled areas
• Why a potentially profound experience can still leave a trail of real-world harm

Selected timestamps

• 00:02:07 — How Kimon found the story
• 00:03:52 — Sonoran Desert toad natural history
• 00:06:20 — 5-MeO-DMT and the toad’s defensive secretions
• 00:08:47 — Octavio Rettig and the rise of “toad medicine”
• 00:11:34 — The Comcáac community and claims of recovered tradition
• 00:14:50 — Is there evidence of ancestral toad use?
• 00:20:15 — Psychedelic tourism and its consequences
• 00:22:30 — Seri ironwood carving and the creation of “tradition”
• 00:30:10 — The parallel with white sage
• 00:34:59 — Toad-derived versus synthetic 5-MeO-DMT
• 00:38:44 — Inside the toad-secretion supply chain
• 00:44:35 — What is happening to wild toad populations?
• 00:50:27 — Psychedelic experience, reporting and ethical distance

Further reading and resources

• Kimon de Greef’s original New Yorker investigation, “The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads”
• De Greef on the collection trade, “The Psychedelic Toad Milkers”
• High Country News, “A Hallucinogenic Toad in Peril”
• Sonoran Desert Toad Fund, supporting research and conservation throughout the species’ range
• Tucson Herpetological Society, whose president Robert Villa has worked extensively on the toad’s conservation
• Sonoran Desert toad species account from AmphibiaWeb
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sonoran Desert toad species profile
• PLOS One, “Diet and Chemical Defenses of the Sonoran Desert Toad”
• California Native Plant Society, White Sage Protection